Case Study # $1$ Forward: The setting of the case study is a corporate business consulting firm, Business Insight established in $1995.$ The first has a great reputation within the industry and tries to stay on top of the most current practice to become more efficient and relevant to fulfilling clients needs. This organization as part of their regular practice, generally signs up new clients through referrals and industry networks. It has been rare that the organization has had to actively recruit clients. The work has brought in plenty of opportunities with little to no downtime for the consultants. This is believed to be a sign that our clients value the services provided by the organization enough to spread the word. This consulting firm hires both part and full$-$time resources to work on several project engagements in various industries predominantly in health care, IT$/$tech$,$ banking, and telecommunications. There has not been a lot of attrition at Business Insight with several key members of the core consulting group assuming positions within the leadership group of the firm and most having been hired since the inception of the organization. The ratio of consultants, currently, is mostly larger on the side of full$-$time$/$permanent while the part$-$time consultants or freelancers as they are commonly referred to with the firm have not been as much a target for hire in the past five $(5)$ years. There is a sense after the last few years that some changes are needed to solidify the core consulting team and to enable them to diversify and grow the client base even further. If we are to expand our client base and potentially grow into other industries, we need to have people who can handle it and provide the needed services that our clients expect. The workload for existing consultants has been increasing for some time now and the logical conclusion by all is that there is an urgent need to hire new consultants. The leadership group does agree to the need for hiring new individuals, but this is where the agreement ends, they cannot agree as to how many and what type of individuals they are looking for. This makes it hard to have the recruitment team working at sourcing potential candidates. The Case Study: Discussions have been underway to come up with a consensus around the new hires that should be brought on$-$board at Business Insight. Diana, the VP of Operations with the HR director, Vanessa have been trying to come up with a profile of the individual $($s$)$ they would like to recruit to suit the demands of the organization. This is key to be able to advertise for the positions as soon as possible as it can take some time to go through a full recruitment process from advertising to on$-$boarding. At issue is the fact that different people involved in the process are in a disagreement over numbers to hire, skills, and industry knowledge to focus on$.$ Diana and Vanessa have listed each of the contributors and their opinions so to be able to come up with a list of items to potentially focus on$.$ Tom, the CEO is all in favour to hire more part$-$time, non$-$permanent consultants who could be called upon to work on engagements as they are entered into when a client is signed with the firm. This would save on benefits costs, stop the non$-$chargeable periods that can often occur with full$-$time staff while also making the firm more flexible in terms of skills and areas of knowledge to have on stand$-$by$.$ Tom believes that this is the way of the future for the firm. Gone are the days where the consultants are full$-$time$/$permanent$,$ we should be looking more for strong freelancers with a variety of skills. Rebecca, the senior project management consultant in the group also in charge of training new project management recruits, has indicated that any new consultant being brought into the firm should be PMP$$ certified with both solid Agile and Waterfall methodologies backgrounds so to be able to handle a wider range of projects which the clients were now insisting upon. Another aspect which Rebecca has done some research on and is pointing out that we should be looking for individuals who are more generalists rather than specialists who are too focused into one area. Our candidates should be able to maneuver from one industry to another having basic yet core delivery skills. David, the VP of Information Technology Services, whos background is very technical would love to see individuals recruited with a strong technical background so that he could be taken off being a subject matter expert on some of the more technical projects the firm sometimes takes on$.$ With a larger group of technical personnel, we could build a strong strategy for delivering technical projects with greater success to a larger set of clients. He does not agree with Rebecca and wants individuals are who more specialists than generalists, this would allow to have individuals focus better on clients solutions. All sides are basically represented which does not help as they are quite opposite to one another. Both Diana and Vanessa are doing loads of analysis around these divergent views trying to come up with the right recruitment strategy for Business Insights. To start this process, they are looking at answering some key questions that will set the tone for their recommendation to the firm. They are as follows: $1.$ What are the top skills that one should look for in a consultant?$2.$ Should we be aiming for a specialist or more of a generalist type of individuals? What are the main differences?$3.$ How is the PMP$$ certification from PMI$$ regarded in terms of having project management consultants? Are there any benefits to the firm?$4.$ What are the advantages and disadvantages of having the new consultants be freelancers? On the other side, what are the advantages and disadvantages of having the new consultants be permanent?$5.$ Placing yourself in Diana and Vanessas shoes, what would you recommend the strategy be to hire the new personnel? Provide a profile for a potential hire that would work in this case.